The people of Chizhou placed deep faith in the divine, believing that all things possessed a spiritual essence — that whatever was taken must be returned in kind, so that breath could be renewed and life perpetuated through the ages.
If someone only ever took without giving back, sooner or later retribution would come for them.
That was precisely what people said when word slipped out from the Huichun Clinic that Zou Sifang had fallen ill.
As they say, fortune’s wheel turns for everyone — how could all the good things in the world keep falling to one family? Take enough advantages for long enough, and eventually something else must be given in return.
The Zou family’s wealth, in particular, was built on blood and flesh. The “Lingqianxue” was so rare that even a hundred deer might not yield a few taels of it, and however vast the swampland, it was impossible to harvest it year after year.
Shepherds had long since spotted it themselves — the servants of the Xiong Family and the herb-gatherers of the Zou Family riding on horseback, driving herds of deer, deliberately chasing them deep into the marshes. The deer trapped in the swamp cried out night after night; people passing along the marsh’s edge could hear those sounds for three consecutive days — wailing like weeping children — before they finally faded into the ever-present mist, leaving behind a silence as deep as death.
This was the Xiong Family’s source of wealth: a road to fortune paved in blood.
And now, the toll for that road was the life of the Zou Family’s master.
To make it easier for servants to tend to him around the clock, Zou Sifang’s bedchamber had been moved from the northern wing to the western annex. Fire basins were lit throughout the room to drive out the damp, and layer upon layer of curtains were drawn, as though terrified the man inside might catch the slightest chill.
Zhao Shi lifted the final gauze curtain and at last revealed the figure lying within.
Zou Sifang’s face had taken on a greenish pallor; his eyes were clamped shut, his cracked lips parted slightly, like a fish that had been thrown ashore and left to dehydrate. The air was thick with a foul, rank stench — the smell that comes from a bedridden person long past controlling their bodily functions.
Even Zhao Shi herself could not suppress the revulsion that rose to her face at the sight. She had spent considerable silver hiring close-mouthed people to tend to Zou Sifang, precisely to avoid being trapped day after day in this room saturated with the aura of death.
Hao Bai, young as he was, showed little visible disgust. He simply advised, “Madam, this room needs far more ventilation. Keeping it sealed up like this is not necessarily doing him any good.”
Zhao Shi pressed her handkerchief over her nose and mouth, and simply waved at him to get on with the examination.
Hao Bai sighed and began to take Zou Sifang’s pulse.
For a moment no one in the room spoke; only the sound of breathing gnawed at Zhao Shi’s nerves.
The time Hao Bai spent taking the pulse seemed to equal the combined time of every physician who had come before him. Zou Sifang’s somewhat withered wrist was pressed and turned beneath his fingers, leaving several indentations.
Just as Zhao Shi was nearly out of patience, Hao Bai suddenly turned to the maidservant standing nearby with her head lowered and asked, “Is there a candle?”
The maid glanced at Zhao Shi’s expression, then nodded and went to the corner cabinet to fetch one. Hao Bai lit it and brought it close to the master’s face, then gently pried open his eyelids with his other hand.
Zou Sifang’s eyes were cloudy, yet one could still see that his pupils — which ought to have been round — had become horizontal slits, contracting almost imperceptibly as the light struck them.
Understanding settled in his mind. He blew out the candle, then extended three fingers and pressed and probed across the master’s face, neck, shoulders, and arms.
Zhao Shi, who had been watching with anxious eyes, finally could not hold back. “What is the doctor doing? Has he not already taken the pulse?”
Hao Bai did not reply. When he reached Zou Sifang’s right index finger, he finally stopped. He then took out a small mirror he carried with him and examined the finger carefully. At the very tip of the index finger was an inconspicuous black dot that looked as though a needle had been pushed through it. Scrutinizing it further, one would find that the dot appeared to be a thorn standing straight up inside the flesh — yet there was no sensation of any foreign body beneath the skin; it was smooth as usual.
He laid the master’s hand back beneath the quilt and gave Zhao Shi a slight bow. “Madam, your husband is not ill. He has been poisoned.”
“What?!” Zhao Shi’s face drained of all color, her beauty crumpling with shock.
A flurry of possibilities flashed through her mind; she had turned suspicion on everyone around her — and in the end she gritted her teeth savagely. “To think the Zou Family has handed out so many favors over the years, and all those people who surrounded my husband calling him brother — so it turns out they had their eyes on our money and would resort to such methods to harm him?”
Hao Bai clearly did not share this view. “The poison afflicting the master is exceedingly ancient — unlikely to be easily obtained in this day and age. If someone with ill intent wished to cause harm, they would simply kill the man outright. That he’s been left with a single breath still in him is, frankly, peculiar.”
Zhao Shi gradually calmed herself, though her hands still trembled uncontrollably. “You mean he won’t die anytime soon?”
“This poison is at least a century old. It was once used on sacrificial cattle and sheep during ritual ceremonies — its purpose was to render the poisoned animal motionless on the altar while still keeping it alive, so that the gods might receive the offering. Such ceremonies typically lasted nineteen days, and the poison’s effects lasted exactly nineteen days as well. After those nineteen days, medicine becomes useless and even the gods cannot save him.”
Zhao Shi listened to all of this, and the only word that penetrated was “death.” Her complexion went somewhat pale. “Can the doctor cure this poison?”
Hao Bai lowered his eyes, his expression clearly somewhat unnatural. “To be candid, I do know the formula for the antidote, but one of the necessary medicinal catalysts is so extraordinarily difficult to obtain that I fear—”
Zhao Shi, upon hearing there was still hope, immediately declared, “Please write out the prescription without hesitation, Doctor. Even if it requires something as rare as a thousand-year-old ganoderma mushroom, the Zou Family will never begrudge the silver.”
Knowing further words were useless, he picked up the brush from the table and wrote several characters on a sheet of paper.
Zhao Shi picked it up — and stood there, utterly stunned.
---
In the old northern quarter of the city, diagonally across from the Zou Mansion, an inconspicuous horse carriage came to a stop before a run-down tea house. The driver, wearing a rather striking long blade at his side, was sizing up the tea house’s door curtain with a measured look.
The tea house’s facade had long been weathered beyond recognition by wind and sun; the signboard that had once hung from the beam had vanished without a trace. Only two lines of poetry carved into the pillars at the entrance still hinted at the tea house it had once been:
On a clear and breezy day, flower petals float atop the brew in the stone cauldron; On a rainy night, a spring platter holds the cool jade-green noodles.
Tea house it was called, but it barely qualified as one, for there was not even a proprietor selling tea — only a stream of impoverished tea drinkers coming and going.
Rumor had it that this had once been the finest tea house in all of Chizhou. The proprietor was not only supremely skilled in the art of brewing tea but also a reclusive man of great cultivation; scholars and Taoist monks who admired his reputation often came to seek him out. Over time, his fame and the fragrance of his tea drifted thousands of li beyond these walls, bringing him a moment of renown.
Then one day the proprietor died of illness, and the place gradually fell into ruin. The tea house no longer operated as such, yet those scholars and men of letters who had loved fine tea still gathered here day and night to debate and discourse — criticizing affairs of state, seeking enlightenment in the Tao. Participants took turns bringing fresh tea, each man providing his own cup. Today might be Xiangjun Lanxue; tomorrow, Lüquan Yugua. Though the surroundings were decrepit and everyone present dressed in rags, there was nonetheless a certain ease about it — a sense of having left the mundane world behind.
“Master, this should be the place.”
The person in the carriage gave a low hum of assent. A hand adorned with prayer beads gently lifted the curtain, revealing half a face that held a look of slight weariness. Those narrow, elongated eyes carried a hint of languor; they skimmed over the tea house facade, and then came a faint, unhurried voice: “Then let us go in.”
Dusk was already settling, and small oil lamps sat on each broken table inside the tea house, their light dim and murky — enough to make every figure speaking in low murmurs seem faintly mysterious.
A sound came from the doorway, and two more people walked in.
By long habit, not many people came to the tea house at this hour. Mornings were when it was liveliest; at this time of day it was the wine houses that did their best business.
But no one inside the tea house looked up to observe the two newcomers. Every person was absorbed in their own small world at their tea table, chasing the last threads of fading light, dreaming of forgetting the dust of the world.
The innermost part of the tea room had grown so dark it seemed to have reached its end — and it was there that Zhongli Jing’s footsteps came to a halt.
“Weixiang, over here.”
An elder whose beard was already half white was engaged in a brushwork competition with someone by the light of an oil lamp. His peripheral gaze caught the two arrivals, and he spoke up abruptly: “Young man, that area is sealed off — you cannot enter.”